New evidence could lead to identity of boy's remains

Wednesday

Nov 28, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 28, 2007 at 8:06 PM

When the remains an unidentified boy were buried in a Wheaton cemetery in October, investigators vowed that the search for his identity would not be laid to rest. New scientific evidence may now have brought them closer to learning who the boy is.

Dan Petrella

When the remains an unidentified boy were buried in a Wheaton cemetery in October, investigators vowed that the search for his identity would not be laid to rest. New scientific evidence may now have brought them closer to learning who the boy is.

A man walking his dog Oct. 8, 2005, near Ferry Road and Meadow Drive in unincorporated Naperville Township near Warrenville discovered the 3- to 4-year-old child’s partially decomposed remains in a blue canvas laundry bag. After chasing leads for two years and gathering all the physical evidence they needed from the remains, the DuPage County sheriff’s office buried the boy Oct. 15 at Assumption Cemetery in Wheaton.

Through a test performed on a piece of the boy’s jawbone, a Canadian geology professor determined that he spent most of his short life in northeastern Illinois.

“You get the oxygen atoms in your bones from water, the water you drink,” said Harry Schwarcz, professor emeritus of geography and earth science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “As you move around North America, the number of these atoms changes in a well-known way.”

A sergeant in the sheriff’s office provided Schwarcz with samples from the boy’s remains, and a Naperville mother donated a child’s tooth for comparison. The isotopes in the two samples were nearly identical, according to his testing.

Schwarcz also was able to determine that the boy’s mother most likely lived in Canada while she was pregnant before moving to Illinois.

The professor’s findings allow investigators to narrow the focus of their search.
“This just tells us a little more certainty that someone here knows who he is and is just afraid to come forward,” said Maj. Mark Edwalds, commander of the sheriff’s investigations unit. “Hopefully somebody will get a conscience and come and identified this little guy.”

When the boy was found, he was wearing a brand of shirt and pants only available at Wal-Mart stores. By searching their databases, Wal-Mart determined the specific combination was only purchased together three times around the time the boy was found. Two of the purchases were made far away, in Mississippi and New Mexico. The third outfit was bought in Forest Park.

“This new information is based on scientific data, not guesswork or interpretation, and tends to lend credence to our working theory that the clothes our little boy was wearing were purchased locally, at a Wal-Mart in Forest Park,” Sheriff John Zaruba said. “I believe that there has to be someone, somewhere here in northern Illinois, perhaps even in DuPage County, who can help us identify this child and put a name on his gravestone.”